Read Online Russell Wiley Is Out to Lunch by Richard Hine - Free Book Online Page A

even if she devotes large chunks of time to acting like a pal to me, Susan, Ben and Martin. She’ll always be the person who meets with Henry behind closed doors each week, reviewing spreadsheets, catching up on office gossip and deciding when and how to cut our staff or our budgets.
    “Who came up with ‘Diaper Boy’? I love it.” She smiles again to indicate how much fun this gossipy stuff can be.
    I don’t take the bait this time.
    “So how’s the budget reforecast shaping up?”
    “Good news!” says Jeanie. “I was just coming to tell you. I found an extra hundred and twenty-nine thousand. I’ve put it into your trade advertising budget.”
    “You just found it?”
    “Not so loud.” She perches herself on my guest chair, puts an elbow onto the papers on my desk and leans toward me. She’s wearing a long-sleeved top with horizontal blue and white stripes. Most of the mothers in our office wouldn’t even attempt such a look. But Jeanie works out so much she can almost pull it off. “Let’s just keep this between us. There’s no need to tell Henry.”
    I’m not sure what surprises me more these days—the amount of trust Henry still places in Jeanie, or the number of little secrets she manages to keep from him.
    “OK,” I say. “But what if he notices we’re running a lot more ads?”
    “Don’t book the ads yet. We may have some budget cuts coming.”
    “So how much of the one-twenty-nine will I be giving back?”
    Jeanie sucks air through her teeth. “We’ll probably ask you for three hundred.”
    “So instead of being plus one-twenty-nine, I’m actually minus one-seventy-one?”
    She looks confused. As if she didn’t know math was something you could do in your head. “Something like that. But it’s better than being minus three hundred, right?”
    “I guess so,” I tell her. “Well, listen, thanks for bringing me the good news.”
    Instead of leaving, Jeanie leans even further across my desk. “So,” she says, “did you hear about Ben’s bathrobes?”
    “Bathrobes?” I’m trying to sound noncommittal. I know exactly what she’s talking about. I have one hanging in my closet at home.
    “Did you know those bathrobes he ordered for Georgina’s spa day cost three hundred and forty dollars each?”
    “Wow. They must be pretty good quality.”
    “You don’t think that’s a little extravagant?”
    Ben’s title is special events director. Before he joined us, the position was just called “events director.” But Ben won’t produce any event unless it’s special. Which means we’re hosting more lavish, more talked-about, more well-attended events than ever before. Jeanie spends so much time going after Ben it makes me wonder if she’s under secret instructions from Henry to build a file on him. It has nothing to do with Ben’s homosexuality, of course. Henry is a highly evolved executive and a tolerant individual. He would never be seen to discriminate against anybody based on his own personal phobias.
    “Didn’t Georgina have a budget?” I ask. “I thought that her spa day was for twenty-five of our best clients. I heard it was a big success.”
    “Well, it’s hard for us to judge how successful it was. We weren’t there.”
    I sit back and clasp my chin in my hand, thinking how I might change the subject. Because now’s not the time to tell Jeanie that I was the person Georgina Bird called when a client canceled on her at the last minute. That I took a break from the stress of my day to enjoy a one-hour hot-stone massage, followed by a European facial, capped off with a hydrating body wrap. It was one of those company-paid thank-yous sales managers try to give their friends in marketing whenever they can. Taking home an imported designer robe in my gift bag seemed like the perfect end to my very special day.
    “How’s Justin doing?” I ask, feigning concern for Jeanie’s obnoxious second child. “Did he get over that infection OK?”
    After Jeanie leaves, I